Page 308 of These Tears

So she waits until the end of the lunch, which is plenty of time for every wrong idea imaginable to put down roots.

The kitchen belongs only to us girls in this moment, with Conall cooling off over a glass of wine in the sitting room, and Elias upstairs.

In my bedroom.

Anna scrapes a piece of roasted potato into the bin and watches it fall. ‘You’re not telling me anything about Norway.’

I lower another plate into the slot of the dishwasher, careful not to knock against the others.

‘A lot happened.’ It comes out on a sigh. A heavy one.

‘That clears everything up then,’ she rumbles sardonically and sets her plate inside the machine.

‘Glad to help.’

Giving me a sidelong glance our mother perfected and both of us unwillingly inherited, she leans her hip against the counter and crosses her arms.

Big sister stance.

She is serious.

I could tell her. About the airport. The cabin, the chains and the blizzard. The choices he stole and the choices he eventually placed back into my hands.

But none of them feel like the truth.

I worry at my lip as I attempt to remould the past few months into something that won’t make her eyes fall out.

Punishment was an ugly story Elias understood well enough to hold on to. Protection required believing there was something in him capable of saving rather than ruining. It required hope, and such a thing has always frightened him more than the alternative.

He had known I was being watched when not even I did.

Telling her all that makes the beginning wrong, though it doesn’t erase what it cost us.

But those things no longer belong to nightmares. They belong to Elias and me, to the long, unpleasant work of separating fear from devotion and protection from possession.

And in the end, he had come back to finish things and make sure Cromwell could never reach me again, even if the price of my peace was his life.

That is the truth that matters more than the lies our beginning is wrapped in.

The dishwasher creaks as I push it closed.

‘It was difficult,’ I say. ‘But I’m alright. Learnt a lot of new things. Found myself, I think.’

Anna dries her hands on a tea towel, eyes remaining on me. ‘Conall says it was a gruesome fight.’

My mind stumbles over that but then rebounds when I realise she means the court proceedings.

‘I suppose.’

Her mouth sets stubbornly. ‘That sounds suspiciously like something a woman says right before she begins to make excuses for a man. Familiar song?’

I chuckle low. ‘No excuses needed.’

‘Then what are you doing?’

‘Waiting for him to properly ask me to marry him.’

Her lips part. The tea towel stops moving between her hands.